


right where you left me

by Jo_B



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29102091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_B/pseuds/Jo_B
Summary: Once a year, he sits at an empty table.
Relationships: Maeve Donovan/Spencer Reid
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	right where you left me

**Author's Note:**

> Not me writing real feelings into a fanfic instead of like... therapy 🥴 
> 
> I told myself I wasn't going to write a Maeve fic (because it's SAD and i'm a literary potato), but i heard this song and could _not_ stop thinking about it through this lens. I've also been thinking about an old friend a lot lately, and all the things (big and small) we still do to keep her alive. So that's pretty much the theme of this.
> 
> I also still have issues with this whole storyline, but I'll save that for the end notes lol. Thanks for reading :)

* * *

Help, I'm still at the restaurant  
Still sitting in a corner I haunt  
Cross-legged in the dim light  
They say, "What a sad sight."

— right were you left me, Taylor Swift

* * *

There is that old, familiar adage of Einstein saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting a different result.”

It’s a misattribution, of course. Einstein never said it, and neither did George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Jefferson, or Mark Twain. The precise source is unclear, but currently, the leading theory is that it originated in some twelve-step meeting: Narcotics Anonymous, Al-Anon, AA. _Anonymous_ being the operative phrase.

It’s funny, sometimes: how history revises itself.

He has never expected a different outcome, but nevertheless, he wonders if the hostess thinks he truly is crazy, or if any of the staff has caught on.

“I’d like to make a reservation, please,” he says once a year on November 3rd, case permitting. The hostess is the owner’s daughter, and she must surely recognize his voice by now. “Table fourteen, at seven o’clock on the sixth.”

And perfectly scripted, she always replies, “Absolutely, sir! Can I get a name for the table?”

“Spencer Reid,” he answers, and spells it out for her, just in case. “And if she gets there first… Maeve Donovan.”

It felt strange and misplaced, the first time he repeated her name after she was gone, the sound of it shattering the calm in his apartment. A jagged edge that still made his lungs ache.

Speaking her name aloud _before_ was not his only fatal mistake, but it was the very first—the climb up to the Reichenbach Fall.

Here’s how he justifies it: to forget how everything fell apart would be to forget a part of her story. He holds himself perfectly accountable, wallows in his own mistakes, but in some roundabout way – he hopes there’s some honor to be found here.

It also feels nice, once in a while, to play make-believe. If he closes his eyes, he could pretend that one year, she _might_ beat him to the table. One year, she’ll arrive at the exact same time, and they’ll hug in the doorway. One year, she’ll rush in, fifteen minutes late, apologizing for the traffic, and finally sit across from him in the opposite chair.

He says her name aloud, and for a moment, she’s still alive and excited to see him.

He sits at the same table and orders the meal he would have gotten if he’d stayed, but now bitterly hates. Every year, he wonders what she would have ordered, asks the wait staff question after question, always settling on something different.

“Does this chicken have cilantro in it?” he asks, because she laughed one morning as she explained, “It tastes like soap to me, and I have my mother to thank for that! That’s actually a variation in one of our olfactory-receptor genes, 6A2. It magnifies all the aldehydes.”

He glances, every so often, at table twenty-seven, in the middle of the front wall of windows and tries not to stare. This year’s November 6th is a Friday, and the restaurant is packed, and the man sitting with his family across the room is _not_ Bobby Putnam looking back, back, back at him.

Spencer wonders who is out there mourning for _him_.

The check eventually comes, as it always does, and the waitress asks him this time, “We’re starting our holiday fundraiser a little early this year, trying to buy toys for families in need. Would you like to donate today?”

It’s suddenly off-script, but he nods and says, “Absolutely. Is there a form for that?”

She brings it back, and he signs his name on the check, but writes out hers on the form like he does for every donation he makes now.

_Would you like to donate in honor of someone else?_

_Would you like to donate in honor of someone else?_

_Would you like to donate in honor of someone else?_

He writes out her name like something need-based and compulsive – as if she will cease to exist if her name ever fades from view. Her name on the page, it’s proof Maeve Donovan was here.

He can’t be the only one still writing it, but sometimes it feels that way.

Hotch had told him in the very beginning: “Eventually, you’ll be able to move on.”

He wondered what it meant back then, and he wonders now. One day, will he walk out of this restaurant and never step back in? Will the words she had written him, every conversation they ever had over the phone, the finer inflections of her voice, all start to disappear? When he leaves for a case, years from now, will _The Narrative of John Smith_ be by his side, or tucked away in a shelf at home, only to be opened once or twice a year?

Garcia once stood on the other side of his door and promised him, “Eventually, it won’t hurt so much. Eventually, you’ll be able to remember her and smile.”

The thing is, he does smile.

He comes to this restaurant every year, carries her handwriting with him wherever he goes, keeps her picture on his nightstand – and smiles at the memory of every silly joke she ever made.

He smiles at her love of _Sherlock Holmes,_ good coffee, and her parents’ old cat who would weave between her feet whenever she’d visit.

He smiles at the echo of her voice as she said, “I love you,” so easily through the phone. It seemed so daunting, so risky – but her love, if nothing else, would always be safe with him.

He couldn’t quite speak it aloud just yet, but perhaps he didn’t need to.

_You’d die for her?_

_Yes._

In between phone calls and letters, he used to get caught up in daydreams, in spite of every anchor holding him in reality. She’d never even _seen_ him. They hadn’t so much as held hands.

But he’d picture them living in a house by the Potomac or Shenandoah, or an apartment in Georgetown. They’d have a few baby geniuses, as JJ would call them, with familiar middle names and eager sets of godparents. It wouldn’t always be easy; like every one of his friends, he is tethered to his job, but she was, too. They would make it work, like Alex and James did.

Does “moving on” mean giving that life to someone else? Morgan swears in all directions that he’ll fall in love again someday, but most times, he hardly thinks it’s possible.

“I’m sorry,” he’ll have to say to the next person who tries. He’ll press a hand firmly to his chest and explain, “Someone else already owns this, but perhaps she’d be willing to let you rent.”

Somewhere far away, Maeve is holding the piece of his soul he lost on the day she died.

He pays his bill and wonders if he’ll ever see it again.

He’s always been a man of science and logic and reasoning, but if he didn’t know any better, he could swear he feels her when he’s half-asleep and dreaming: a set of invisible strings tying them together.

Until the day he dies, though, he’ll never know for sure.

The hostess smiles softly as he passes by on his way out.

“See you next year,” she says, and all he can do is smile back and nod as he goes.

**Author's Note:**

> ik there are so many plot holes in cm, but i haven't rly seen anyone talk about how when Reid gets to the restaurant, he says his own name for the reservation, but then Maeve's ex says that _she_ made the reservation? so i rly don't know what to believe anymore, but for this fic's purposes, i made it a joint reservation haha
> 
> also idk i feel like for their first date they could have very easily just gone to one of their homes instead of just balling out in public? ik they thought the stalker was gone, but way to go from 0 to 100 there wowee
> 
> and MY LAST THING is that i heard MGG was the one who wanted Maeve to die (which, very rude), but i do wish we got to know her as a character instead of solely as Reid's love interest??? was that too much to ask
> 
> okay, rant over lmao, thanks for reading!! :)


End file.
